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August 09, 2007

Fiery Furnaces, Widow City

The new Fiery Furnaces album, Widow City, reminds me again why I love them so much. What gets me most about my favorite FF songs are those moments, always unexpected, where they just hit me with something that sounds like the greatest thing in the world. It's the third or fourth act in "Chris Michaels," around five minutes in; it's the rambling political screed of the "Tropical Ice-Land" single version of "We Got Back the Plague", the first FF song I ever heard; it's the third act in "Chief Inspector Blancheflower" ("well, I rode up to Springfield..."), or maybe it's the fourth act ("so I went down to her dad's bakery..."), or fuck me, maybe it's the guitar solo (!) at the end. It's the sort of stuff that makes me amazed & happy at how great music can be.

And on Widow City, for example, there's that heavy guitar in "The Philadelphia Grand Jury" around 4 minutes in that just appears out of nowhere; there's the gorgeous (& "Evergreen"-esque) "My Egyptian Grammar"; there's the Led Zeppelin-esque guitar riff in "Navy Nurse".

And then there's my favorite, so far--"Restorative Beer" (listen), which, in addition to its wonderfully refreshing title, has both a lovely Harrison-esque guitar and lyrics:

She tells me about last night at her 103rd birthday, she counted... she counted her pairs of pants again, "I've only got 53, minus the ones I've got on"--I want a restorative beer, to take my mind off these tears; I want a restorative beer. [1]

I am absolutely in love with this album: the FF still sound like no one else, and they still sound better than everyone else.